


Emily

by Artemis1000



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dolls, Gen, Gothic, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Treat, haunted dolls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 10:04:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13656741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis1000/pseuds/Artemis1000
Summary: "It's just a doll, Marlene," they would tell her but Marlene knew better. Emily was so much more than a doll, she was a loving soul encased in porcelain.





	Emily

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sweetcarolanne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetcarolanne/gifts).



“It’s just a doll, Marlene,” they would tell her when she spent her weekends painstakingly sewing tiny little dresses and hats and shoes. Marlene never argued, for she knew they wouldn’t understand, it was enough for her to know that Emily needed a new dress lest she would be cold in winter.

“Is this about your doll again, Marlene?” they would ask, their voices harsh with exasperation when she said she couldn’t move into the nicer apartment offered to her. Emily had had too many homes taken from her already but they wouldn’t understand so she made up feeble excuses about the windows being too drafty and the trip to work too long.

“You never used to be so obsessed with your dolls,” was all too often said to her face. She knew the words spoken behind her back were far less flattering.

Her collection of dolls had always been one of the many things that marked her as strange in the eyes of her relatives, they had always thought of it as her trying to compensate for the child she never had, but until Emily, it had been a mere amusing oddity. Or maybe, she thought sometimes, she had accepted their petty cruelties as her due until Emily showed her what being loved and accepted felt like.

“Let’s not hold it against them, sweetheart,” Marlene told them both when she returned home after a long and exhausting day. As always, the first thing she did after hanging up her coat was to pick up Emily from the crib. “They don’t understand you like I do.”

Emily liked to have a nap in the crib once she grew tired of watching the world outside of Marlene’s window. Marlene always left her sitting on the windowsill when she went to work and at first, she had worried that Emily might fall and shatter her delicate porcelain limbs when she explored the apartment on her own, but she had never once harmed a single golden curl on her little head.

She would place Emily on the couch then, tuck her little bonnet back into place, and only then would she make herself a cup of tea, all the while followed by Emily’s watchful, unblinking blue doll’s eyes.

She was such an inquisitive girl, her daughter, it was a shame the world would never know her as Marlene did.

Marlene could already smile again, albeit a little wanly, when she perched on the couch with her cup of steaming hot tea clutched in hands which were still cold and stiff from the chilly winds outside. “Now then, why don’t you tell me what you have seen while I was gone? Was old Mrs. Myrtle wandering the streets for hours again? She’s very lonely, you know, just like I used to be before you found me.”

In the eyes of her sisters and cousins the collection of china dolls neatly lined up in rows on the shelves of Marlene’s living room had been an attempt to cure her loneliness, yet that was far too simple an answer. These dolls had been a mere pastime, maybe one she spent too much time on since she had nobody else to spend it on, but she wasn’t the first person to spend too much time and money on their passions.

The dolls were nothing like Emily. To call Emily a doll would be an insult to the beautiful soul encased in bone-white porcelain and given new life.

She had been a pathetic sight when Marlene found her in the bargain bin of her favorite antiquary, her dress covered with mud, her dirty hair tangled. Her other parents, her birth parents, had had no more love for Emily in her second life than in her first.

“The eyes are nice enough, you can scavenge her for spare parts,” Henry from the antiquary had said and Marlene had agreed, though she knew even then she would never have the heart to do so. Emily was beautiful, she just needed a little bit of help to uncover the beauty hidden by layers of cruelty and neglect. Marlene knew a lot about that, after all.

Once home, she had cleaned her up the best she could with an hour left before bedtime and left her on her workbench.

When a nightmare woke Marlene in the middle of the night as they so often did, Emily was sitting on her nightstand, watching her. By morning, she had been back where Marlene left her, unchanged except for a rose blossom from the bouquet on Marlene’s nightstand still clinging to her hair.

Every night that followed, Emily was waiting for her when Marlene awoke from her nightmares, until they had faded altogether.

Her daughter was loving, if only she was loved in return.

Marlene put down her empty cup and leaned back, eyes fluttering shut in exhaustion. It had been a truly and tiring day. She felt the comforting touch of cold porcelain against her fingers and smiled.

The world would never understand Emily but the world did not need to concern them as long as they had one another.


End file.
